If then we deny the historical truth of a legend which seems to have been universally credited by the Romans, how are we to account for the origin of the tale?  Was the tradition of native growth, or was it imported from Greece when the literature of that country was introduced into Latium?  These are questions that can only be answered by guess; but perhaps the following theory may in some degree be found satisfactory.  We have shown that tradition, from the earliest age, invariably asserted that Pelasgic colonies had formed settlements in central Italy; nothing is more notorious than the custom of the Pelasgic tribes to take the name of their general, or of some town in which they had taken up their temporary residence; now AEne’a and AE’nus were common names of the Pelasgic towns; the city of Thessaloni’ca was erected on the site of the ancient AEne’a; there was an AE’nus in Thrace,[A] another in Thessaly,[A] another among the Locrians, and another in Epi’rus:[1] hence it is not very improbable but that some of the Pelasgic tribes which entered Latium may have been called the AEne’adae; and the name, as in a thousand instances, preserved after the cause was forgotten.  This conjecture is confirmed by the fact, that temples traditionally said to have been erected by a people called the AEne’adae, are found in the Macedonian peninsula of Pall’ene,[2] in the islands of De’los, Cythe’ra, Zacy’nthus, Leuca’dia, and Sicily, on the western coasts of Ambra’cia and Epi’rus, and on the southern coast of Sicily.

The account of several Trojans, and especially AEne’as, having survived the destruction of the city, is as old as the earliest narrative of that famous siege; Homer distinctly asserts it when he makes Neptune declare,

    —­Nor thus can Jove resign
  The future father of the Dardan line: 
  The first great ancestor obtain’d his grace,
  And still his love descends on all the race. 
  For Priam now, and Priam’s faithless kind,
  At length are odious, to the all-seeing mind;
  On great AEneas shall devolve the reign,
  And sons succeeding sons the lasting line sustain. 
    ILIAD, xx.

But long before the historic age, Phrygia and the greater part of the western shores of Asia Minor were occupied by Grecian colonies, and all remembrance of AEne’as and his followers lost.  When the narrative of the Trojan war, with other Greek legends, began to be circulated in Lati’um, it was natural that the identity of name should have led to the confounding of the AEne’adae who had survived the destruction of Troy, with those who had come to La’tium from the Pelasgic AE’nus.  The cities which were said to be founded by the AEne’adae were, Latin Troy, which possessed empire for three years; Lavinium, whose sway lasted thirty; Alba, which was supreme for three hundred years; and Rome, whose dominion was to be interminable, though some assign a limit of three thousand years.  These numbers bear evident traces of superstitious invention; and